


Together

by Silverskye13



Series: The Stairs to the Core (Grillster Stories) [13]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gaster returns, I really don't know what to tag this as, Reunions, The Void, WELCOME TO THE VOID
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 13:19:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14978003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverskye13/pseuds/Silverskye13
Summary: Prompt:Could you write a short fanfic about Grillby and Gasters reunion, after Sans brings back Gaster from the void? (Or just Gaster coming back from the void and meeting Grillby again.)





	Together

**Author's Note:**

> (In which the deep, dark secrets of my quiet headcannons are finally revealed).

Grillby… didn’t know where he was.

He knew he felt like he was floating. Floating in a cluttered space filled with hundreds - no - thousands of voices. They were deafening, consuming, and above them pervaded an overwhelming feeling of remorse. Of hurt. Like a wounded child, screaming for their parents. For anyone.

Grillby remembered… faintly… above the cacophony of mixed pieces of presence and thought… who he was. A bartender. A worried bystander. A friend. A father. He was Grillby. He wasn’t the voices he was hearing. He was sure of it. He was… separate… even though something seemed to be cramming in on him. Like a thousand souls all struggling for purchase in a sea of themselves. 

Grillby remembered…….

Grillby remembered the human. The… seventh… soul. The last. Was this freedom? Was he dead?

N… no…… certainly not. Death was dark, and smothering. Quiet. This was crowded.

At some point, Grillby realized he could see. It was less like opening his eyes, and more like the realization that he could -  _should_ be able to. He was just suddenly aware,  _intensely_ aware. He could see. He could see he was surrounded by souls. White, flickering, jittering with magic, scared. They didn’t know where they were or why, just like he didn’t. Once or twice he glimpsed shapes like half-formed monsters trying to find themselves in the mess of magic and pulsing forms and dissonance. Like static, or computer code, all numbers strung that in some points you could read but mostly just passed like gibberish. 

Watching them pulse and shiver almost overwhelmed him. Grillby felt a building haze like static, a weird clammoring at his soul to give in to the sound of a thousand voices all talking in unison. To get lost in it. To forget who he was or what he was thinking. To forget what he could see. To go back to  _not remembering_. To be lost.

But he glimpsed something, something  _familiar._ Something incredibly and completely him, and yet distinctly not. It was a figure, not flickering like the rest but oddly ghost-like. Ethereal but firm, with a solid outline and a strong sense of  _quiet_. It was… familiar.  _He was_ familiar.

Grillby felt the sensation of movement like he was walking, but his soul knew in this place he had no real substance to move with. But he did anyway, passing gingerly between shuddering souls and echoing voices. He reached out a hand, or perhaps just with his soul, and caught the being on the shoulder. He gasped. Grillby felt a jolt like cold. Like something more than just cold. Like abandonment. Like time.

Like nothing.

He looked at Grillby, and…. Grillby re….. rem…. membered.

 _And Grillby remembered Gaster_.

And Gaster looked at him, and Grillby stared back, and if Grillby could cry he would have.

And Gaster smiled a wide, broken smile. He clasped his arms around Grillby… or perhaps that’s just what it felt like. It seemed to Grillby like he was being held down to his very soul.

Grillby stammered, trying to say a name. Trying to say  _anything_ , but he couldn’t. When he tried it seemed the souls around him started screaming, making it impossible for his voice to ever be heard. And then there was a rippling, like the world was tearing apart. Terror ripped its way through the sea of souls, terror, but above it the thrumming of a weary sadness. Something bigger than them. Something more powerful then them. 

Gaster clutched Grillby tightly, and Grillby  _felt_ more than he heard.

_Remember me._

I will! He wanted to scream it. He wanted to scream it with his soul but he couldn’t.

_Please – I’m scared of being alone._

_Please remember._

_P l e   a   s        e  -               — ——-         – –     -_

Grillby woke up abruptly, his head spinning, a bizarre sort of feeling in his soul like it had been ripped from his body. It took him a moment to realize he was staring at his ceiling. To register the dark interior of the bar against the blinding white he’d been steeped in. He caught his breath for a moment, flickering frantically, listening to the scattered groans and whispered voices so  _starkly quiet_ compared to what he’d heard. His….. customers… his friends…… were waking up? There were mumbled questions. What happened. Where are we. What was that? Did you see it?

Grillby’s head spun, everything felt foggy. He didn’t know how everyone else could stand. He felt like his mouth was made of static, like his eyes were hemmed in white. There was a breath caught in his breath like smoke, a breath like a word he’d been choking on for years but had no way of every remembering how it was spoken.

And then Grillby snapped to his feet and he ran. 

_I remember._

“Grillby? Where are you going?”

He didn’t know who was asking. He didn’t care. He slammed the door open and staggered out into the snow.

“Grillby?”

“What’s going on?”

He scrambled headlong and heedless, ignoring the sting of snow and the cold air in his throat. He vaulted over monsters still laying confused where they’d fallen. He ignored cries after him. He ran.  _He ran_. 

_I remember! I remember!_

Fast into Waterfall without a blink of the hesitation he’d known his whole life. Huffing smoke and sparks. 

_I remember! I promise! I promise!_

Through a series of tunnels he never knew existed - or perhaps never remembered. To a door in a wall he’d never had the eyes to see. Into a room like a crypt, like a tomb, with a figure standing huddled away from him. Grillby stood in the doorway panting, haggard, feeling the stings catching up to him from the rush through water and snow. But he didn’t care. All he cared about was the monster turning to face him now, a monster crying, and laughing, and grinning because he’d never been able to until just now. Or perhaps in a past, in another world he had. But it didn’t matter. Not anymore at least.

“Gaster?”

The monster beamed at Grillby, and he laughed, and he cried, “ _I’m home_.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I’ve always kind of thought that since Gaster’s soul is scattered across time and space, that maybe when Asriel absorbs all the souls in the Underground, he was able to pull the broken pieces back together. Asriel becomes a small god right? What’s time and space to a godling? If it’s all the souls in the underground, why not one split into a million pieces?
> 
> I dunno. It’s always been my thought ahaha. My secret hope for Gaster.


End file.
